Electricians, maintenance personnel, homeowners, and other interested persons often need to identify to which circuit breaker a particular electrical outlet is connected. This knowledge is necessary so that a particular branch circuit may be deenergized for maintenance, to deal with an emergency such as flooding of an area, or for other similar reasons. Often, the circuit is identified using two persons, typically equipped with walkie-talkies or similar communications equipment if the distance between the outlet and the breaker box is such that voice communication is impractical. A first person connects a load (e.g., a lamp) to the particular electrical outlet of interest. The second person then sequentially turns circuit breakers off and on until the first person indicates that the lamp or other load is no longer energized. If the circuit breaker associated with more than one outlet must be identified, the lamp or other indicating device must be moved to the second outlet and the process repeated. This procedure is both time consuming and labor intensive.
More recently, electrical testers have been developed that connect a signal-emitting device to the outlet being traced. A probe may then be used at the breaker box or similar termination point to identify which conductor in the breaker box carries the signal from the tester. While this procedure may offer a slight improvement over the method discussed hereinabove, it still requires either two people or multiple trips between the breaker box and the outlets when multiple outlets are being traced. One advantage, however, is that power to multiple circuits need not be systematically interrupted, thereby avoiding the need to reset clocks or other devices requiring a reset after power interruption thereto.